Salt Map for a Sleeping Harbor

At low tide the harbor is a throat of stone, chains lying slack like old sentences, a heron stitches the shallows with its needle legs, and salt climbs the pilings, quiet as frost.

Beneath the boats, the water holds its breath and shows the ribs of wrecks, pale and patient; barnacles make a small cathedral of white knobs, each one a syllable the sea forgot.

A child in a yellow coat counts gulls like coins, their cries clang in the wind’s metal bowl; somewhere a foghorn tests its lonely vowel, the sound rolling outward, a slow wheel.

Evening lifts the basin back to its lips, filling the mouth with the blue of return; lanterns bloom along the pier, warm pollen, and the harbor remembers how to shine.